Chapter 10 Experience: The Institutional Perspective
10.5 Capacities, Identity, Values and Capabilities
Identity, beliefs, values and capabilities are important contributors to the culture and climate of an institution. Identity can relate both to institutions and the individual. Interviewees at institutions which were teaching intensive tended to express a more coherent understanding of institutional identity that those at the research intensive institutions. Academics with a strong research perspective appeared to be most
remote from the institutional identity. This was expressed through equivocal language and through gentle criticism of their institutional approaches as was suggested in the quotation under strategy above.
“Everything we do needs to be informed by pedagogy. We all believe;, [and] that’s something that is close to our hearts, that even with these projects; if somebody comes along and says “I’d like to make a video that’s delivered via the web, can you do it?” We’ll say “yes, we can do it from a technology
perspective, but we’re gonna spend a lot of time discussing why you’re doing it and how you think …. what your aims, objectives are, how we’re gonna
evaluate it”.
Individuals expressed strong personal beliefs
“at the end of the day, my real concern is what happens to the students”
A number of institutional managers referred to excellent feedback from the QAA as a result of their institutional review, and proudly pointed to activities which had been identified as good practice in the review reports. Typically the item which had been noted had a pedigree which included
• inclusion in a relevant strategy document,
• development of an associated policy, and
• implementation through a clear tactical understanding of the change in practice which the activity was designed to address.
Examples here include the use of distributed support mechanisms for learning and teaching enhancement activities, the embedding of e-learning development
processes within quality assurance procedures and the integration of learning technology support into other more mainstream institutional practices.
Where managers were aware that strategies, policies, procedures or tactics had resulted in real change in activities, examples were given with pride. Similarly individual non-managers, academics and support staff alike, would volunteer examples of their favourite tactic; motivating change they believed to be good by working indirectly or using “stealth” was a frequent theme.
A commonly forwarded belief referred to technology as a tool: this view extended across institutional managers, profession managers, academics and support professionals.
“My background is in systems development, and as I said earlier on, I don’t believe in IT or systems for the sake of it. …So I always tend to think that you need to have the people who are really involved in whatever the process is, whether it’s teaching, research, management, what have you; you need to have those people engaged in developing the technology, because that’s the only way that technology is going to meet people’s needs”.
Other trailblazers whose activities were either more outward facing or more deeply motivated by research did not move into the more formal role. The latter group were found in both research intensive and teaching intensive institutions. However their analysis often reflected a commitment to the theory, and in their language, the latter group often appeared to be more equivocal.
As might be expected, individual responses tended to reflect the responsibilities associated with the roles which the interviewee undertook; however, consistent themes did emerge from individuals in differing roles across the same institution. Operational managers, typically drawn from the professional services such as a library or computing centre, tended to be more inwardly focussed than their Chancellery team counterparts such as Pro Vice Chancellors and Deputy Vice Chancellors who identified strongly with their institution and tended to demonstrate a sensitivity to the attainments of comparator or competitor institutions.
Trailblazers tended to have quite an individualistic identity, they had frequently pursued ideas and approaches and been rewarded by grant funding. For example
“I’ve had grants ranging from, I think the smallest one was, you know, really quite small, six or seven thousand pounds, sort of in the mid to late ‘90’s, and then the most recent one, quite a lot of money, about twenty-three thousand pounds, for a project that has, you know, had a major impact across a whole programme”.
Many had roles which were outward facing, this perspective often arising as a consequence of external funding either from research councils or because of the
technology focus of the activities they work with, via the JISC. Others worked with local agencies and brought in consultative work, and along the way found themselves at odds with the institutional infrastructure.
“ Another reason we don’t use the university system! We do lots of courses off campus, but they need to be able to log in to things, you know, well, we couldn’t do it via the VLE because we’d have to get them registered with the University, then they’d have to be issued with an id and password, and ….. nightmare!”